Guns need more skill, performing much worse at low skills

[anoobindisguise]

Summary

Balance "The player is substantially less effective with guns at low skill values"

Purpose of change

Fixes #64990
Fixes #66326
The player was too much of an instant expert when it came to guns. Even with zero skill they could easily hit 100% hit rates with precise shots at reasonably distant ranges and could aim quickly enough to gun down an approaching horde without risk. While guns are "the great equalizer" for a reason, and definitely need less training to be effective than bows or melee weapons, firearm novices are not this effective IRL, and even trained combatants like police officers would rarely have 100% hit rate vs even a stationary target in practice, much less in the field against moving and hostile targets. 0 skill is meant to represent total unfamiliarity, i.e. never fired a gun before, and while learning to shoot is a skill you can pick the basics of up in a day or so and get to a decent level of competency in a reasonable time frame compared to mastering fencing or boxing or whatever, I wanted the learning process to be a lot more painful.

Describe the solution

• Increase penalty for having less than 10 skill from 3 dispersion per skill point to 10 dispersion per skill point.
• Previously the above penalty was added to the weapon's base dispersion multiplied by (1.25 + the amount of skill you are below 5 times 0.75). Now it is (1.25 + the amount of skill you are below 5 times 2).
• So for example if a gun had 200 base dispersion and you had 2 skill, its base dispersion of 200 was multiplied by (1.25 + 3 * 0.75 ) = 3.5x = 700 and then added to 3 * 7 (721).
• Now, if you had the same 200 dispersion gun and you had 2 skill, its base dispersion of 200 was multiplied by (1.25 + 3 * 2 ) = 7.25x = 1450 and then added to 10 * 7 (1520). These penalties level off fairly quickly as you approach 5 skill.
• In case of 0 skill and a 200 dispersion gun the penalty used to be 1030. Now it is 2350.
• Aiming a gun is no longer just manipulation score. It is now 60% lifting score (arms), 20% grip score (hands) and 20% manipulation (hands)
• Normally re-orienting your aim always scales your "amount of being aimed" linearly down to 0 at 180 degrees in rotation. Now, that 180 degrees is reduced by lower marksmanship skill, being divided by the amount your skill is less than 5 (so at 0 skill changing your aim radius by 30 degrees is enough that you have to completely re aim from scratch)
• Aiming speed is much more influenced by gun skill. Previously, base aim speed cap ranged linearly from 20-30 from 0-10 gun skill. Now It is a base of 5, with +4 speed per skill level up to level 5, then +1 per level as normal up to 10, giving a range of 5-30 and reaching 25 at skill 5 just like before. This means if you "cheat" your way to fast aim speeds by having a high dexterity and target acquisition tools such as a laser sight, you will still be limited somewhat by your skill.
• Total base aim speed is reduced by 60% at skill zero, as skill "double dips" to pave over many of the other bonuses to aim speed and prevent you from making use of them. This debuff lessens in potency linearly to 7.5 skill, at which point it is completely non existent.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Oh my god there are so many I don't even know to start. Open to suggestions here.

Testing

I loaded this up in game without errors, and brought a dude into town with a debug spawned ar-15 and lots of bullets. I found things to be considerably more difficult than before, but not to a degree that it felt absurd, and was basically no different once I set my skills to be high (5+) using debug. This is super subjective though and this will almost certainly require other people to experience the changes.
I still think that if you have 0 skills whatsoever a gun is going to be by far the most effective weapon you can use, but it's considerably more painful to do now that you cannot just murderize everything the moment the gun is in your hands.

Additional context

[Maleclypse]

Confirming that this will affect NPCs and monsters using the fake NPC as well?

[anoobindisguise]

Confirming that this will affect NPCs and monsters using the fake NPC as well?

I assume NPCs use ranged.cpp but in honesty I have no clue. Monsters should be totally unaffected but the enemies who have guns are either robots (and accuracy is warranted) or ferals (who have a massive debuff to accuracy as is).
I don't know how NPCs aim. is it different than the player?

[fairyarmadillo]

Confirming that this will affect NPCs and monsters using the fake NPC as well?

NPCs appear to also use this. At 0 ranks, this NPC fires about every 6 seconds. At 5 ranks, he shoots about every 3. NPCs seem to always try to take good shots, and standing at this distance with invincibility on, two 0 rank shooters will hit each other every time, though many of the hits will be grazing.

Monsters don't aim, they just automatically take good shots. The feral security guard still seems to hit most of their shots. It may be advisable to increase the delay on gun attacks for some monsters (at least any gun-equipped ferals and mi-go scouts, possibly robots too) to simulate the extra aim time which is now standard for players and NPCs.

[fairyarmadillo]

8 stat 0 skill combat report: In these tests I will be teleporting into the middle of town with multiple glock 22s and attempting to defeat as many enemies as possible. I'll move around obstacles to try to funnel enemies, but I won't be using things like roofs, basements, or making a full retreat. I'll be standing my ground until everything is dead or my character is. Hordes are off.

The expected outcome here is that I make a dent in the zombies but can't kill them so quickly that they don't eventually get me.

ATTEMPT 1: I was able to kill 8 zombies before a pack of dogs surrounded me and killed me.

ATTEMPT 2: Using this fenced in area, I was able to corral and evade the zombies long enough to kill 24 of them. I had ample opportunity to escape and could have survived to fight another day, but wound up sticking around so long that the noise attracted a pretty ungodly horde.

ATTEMPT 3: The evac shelter was unexpectedly attacked by 4 mi-go. Using my twin glocks, I was able to repel all four of them, but not before sustaining heavy damage. My NPC companion was killed in the fighting.

Undeterred, I pursued my quarry to the mi-go scout tower nearby and defeated two more before succumbing to my wounds.

ATTEMPT 4: In Amity, I was only able to defeat 4 enemies before being surrounded. This is mostly because I ran into a police station for cover, not realizing I was boxing myself in.

This feels about right so far. You can do a lot of damage with guns and no skill, but you're no longer able to just completely stomp hordes out with no skill and a couple of pistols. Dogs have turned out to be the real threat to gun users, as they're fast and hard to hit, but that is appropriate - police use dogs against armed suspects for exactly this reason IRL.

[fairyarmadillo]

TEST ROUND 2: These are all with 3 marks/rifles/dodge and a starting survivor equipped with an AR-15 and plenty of spare mags.

Luigi was doing pretty well but then 5 feral humans came out of nowhere and rocked him to death because he had no armor. Hnnngh.

Filiberto racked up 10 kills before getting absolutely swarmed. He also had plenty of time to retreat and places to go to, but for the purposes of this test he just wandered around in the intersection capping zombies in broad daylight in the middle of a big town.

Houston did a bit better. Without any terrain to trip enemies up on, he got 26 kills before being overwhelmed.

Overall both tests feel about right. A gun will put down a given zombie very quickly, but it will not on its own answer for a crowd. You need use confined spaces, obstacles, rooftops, basements, etc. to keep from getting swarmed, or you need auto-fire, grenades, or some other tool to thin crowds. You also need armor so that you don't get too banged up while mowing them down.

The big killer here was grabs. Because of slower aim times, it's less possible to just stand there and shoot at zombies while they try to get hold of you, as they now have opportunity to try to get their hands on you and do something with the fact that they have. This means you're taking more hits while aiming, which either forces you to run around more (burning stamina) or adds up and screws your limb scores, getting you killed.

[fairyarmadillo]

Another 8 stat 3 skill run, using a bare minimum of tactics (ie going inside of buildings), I was able to clear 2 small towns with nothing but an M4. A tiny bit of armor and a melee weapon to swap to would have made this trivial.

[fairyarmadillo]

Testing with a compound bow and wooden broadhead arrows:
0 skills, 10 str - You basically don't crit, but can land good hits for up to 40 damage. Precise shots take just over 6 seconds.
3 skills, 10 str - Precise shots take just over 4 seconds and crit about 1/3 of the time. This is a significant debuff from before, were basically every precise shot within 5 tiles was a crit, and they were much faster. The bow still feels very usable as a tool for stealth kills, but it no longer seems feasable to use it as a primary weapon when multiple enemies know where you are. This is probably a good thing. Creeping around at the edge of town in broad daylight, I was able to kill any lone or pair of zombies I found, but once I got discovered and swarmed I had to drop the bow and run or die.

[fairyarmadillo]

The speed and accuracy of vehicle turrets are unaffected. I assume they use the monster gun system.

I think they should be less accurate, but I don't know how CROWS systems perform IRL compared to human shooters. It's probably out of scope for now in any case.

[BjoHart]

Maybe someone could work this in?

"Fire Menu" New keybindings just for aim, then shoot manual #66829

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When aiming with ranged weapons, i very often have to press the button for steady my aim, to fire when I am exactly ready.
This is the only way for me to deal with many zombies in a firefight.
Solution you would like.

I would like to have an option to jump to the three different shooting modes quickly, but not to fire, just to aim.
Then I can make fine adjustments if I want to.
Just some key bindings would do the job.
Describe alternatives you have considered.

Pressing the button for steading the aim 100000 times more........
Additional context

No response